Scottie Scheffler gets love from a pair of GOATs, a PGA Tour winner gets ‘the shakes’ and Joaquin Niemann gets robbed

Welcome to another edition of The Grind, where we finally broke par again. At mini golf, that is. And I really took it to my 7-year-old daughter:

Talk about tough love. Anyway, I’m back after a fun family vacay, and there’s plenty of real golf to talk about. Let’s get to it.

WE’RE BUYING

Scottie Scheffler: We know this is going to shock everyone, but Scottie Scheffler won again. And we’re running out of things to say about the guy.

That being said, Scottie did things a bit differently this week, winning the BMW Championship despite spotting Robert MacIntyre nine shots on Friday and four shots entering Sunday’s final round. He won for the first time without his trusty caddie Ted Scott (more on that in a bit). And he put the tournament away with arguably the shot of 2025—a pitch-in on the penultimate hole that was reminiscent of Tiger Woods’ “IN YOUR LIFE!” chip at the 2005 Masters and insane flop shot at the 2013 Memorial:

Incredible. The World No. 1 has time and time again proved that he’s the PGA Tour’s POY, but if he were a college football player, that was his “Heisman moment.” And if you still think this guy is “boring,” then I can’t help you. He pulls off shots like that, and he’s a former prison inmate turned movie star! What else do you want?!

Mason Howell: For a second time this year, this 18-year-old made the golf world take notice. The UGa-bound golfer became the third-youngest player to win the U.S. Amateur, defeating Jackson Herrington, 7 and 6 (!), in the championship match.

If you’re forgetting the other time, it was his pair of 63s to earn medalist honors at a U.S. Open final qualifier to become the youngest player in the field at Oakmont. So, yeah, the kid’s got serious game. And while winning a U.S. Amateur doesn’t guarantee pro success, we’d put our money on him making it on the PGA Tour at some point. Speaking of betting …

Marco Penge: This bomber has been absolutely cooking of late and his latest victory—a second of 2025 on the DP World Tour—at the Danish Golf Championship has him up to a career-best 73rd in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Penge served a (perhaps, too harsh) three-month suspension beginning in December for gambling small amounts on golf tournaments he wasn’t involved in more than two years before. But he has clearly moved past that and now has a shot at earning one of the last spots on the European Ryder Cup team. Which would have been a real, well, longshot bet if you placed it at the beginning of 2025.

Sebastian Munoz: The 2019 Sanderson Farms Championship winner earned his first LIV Golf title by beating Jon Rahm in a playoff in Indianapolis. He also carded just the tour’s second ever sub-60 score along the way. And he did it with a double bogey!

Impressive stuff. And it must have felt good to hoist a trophy again. Even if it wasn’t a rooster trophy.

WE’RE SELLING

Jon Rahm winning LIV’s season-long race: The PGA Tour is still trying to figure out its season-long race and FedEx Cup playoffs are almost two decades old, but at least nothing as egregious as what happened on LIV Golf this year occurred. Joaquin Niemann dominated the LIV League all year with five wins, and yet, somehow, lost the season’s individual title (and an $18 million bonus) to a guy who won zero times. Yep, ZERO times.

Kudos to Rahm for his consistent play—he also never finished worse than T-11 on the season—but that’s ridiculous. And if I were Joaquin, I’d have 18 millions reasons to be ticked off about it.

Announcing caddies on the first tee: Look, I get that the Western Golf Association, which runs the BMW Championship, also oversees the fantastic Evans Scholars Foundation so there was some kind of reason to do this (although they’re not training pro caddies). But I still found it to be a bit much.

As the leader of the “PGA Tour caddies are interchangeable” movement I also found the timing funny. Scheffler couldn’t have proved my thesis better, having Chris Kirk’s caddie, Michael Cromie, fill in for Ted, and not miss a beat.

And Michael earned $360K for one week of work! That’s the best gig on the planet! To be clear, I think PGA Tour caddies are great at what they do, but I just think they’re all interchangeable at that level and this was just the latest example. I think the people who think there’s some huge difference between the guys carrying the bags of the best players on the planet are golf’s version of flat-earthers. So a special thanks to Scottie for proving me right. Again. And congrats to Michael for being in the right place at the right time.

‘Overdosing’ on creatine: This is not something I was aware could happen, (if you take one look at me, you’d know I’ve never taken creatine in my life) but apparently it did to Ben Griffin during Sunday’s final round at Caves Valley. Griffin accidentally swallowed a chunk of the stuff from his water bottle before teeing off and said he had “the shakes” the first few holes. And the evidence, mainly this four-putt from five feet, backs that up:

After going six over through his first three holes, Griffin came down off that creatine high and shot seven under the rest of the way. Amazing stuff and we’re glad he recovered OK. I just hope that little blip/sip didn’t cost him a spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

ON TAP

The PGA Tour season and FedEx Cup concludes with the Tour Championship, AKA that big one in Atlanta, AKA that one they’ve been trying to figure out for almost 20 years. That controversial staggered start leaderboard is out this year and the prize money has been “cut” down to $10 million for the winner. But, yeah, they’ll still be OK.

Random tournament fact: Scottie Scheffler’s Sunday pitch-in was nice, but never forget that Bill Haas hit the greatest shot in golf history at out of East Lake back at the 2011 Tour Championship:

OK, so I’m a little biased with Bill being my Wake Forest classmate. But, man, that was awesome. Also, I actually saw one golf media member using Haas' win and surprising FedEx Cup title (he had to have a million things go right for him that week) as a defense of Rahm winning this year's LIV season-long race. There's just one problem: Bill WON the season finale! Anyway, again, that was awesome.

RANDOM PROP BETS OF THE WEEK

—Ben Griffin will ‘overdose’ on creatine at East Lake: 10 MILLION-to-1 odds

—Scottie Scheffler will win (again) at East Lake: 1.5-to-1 odds

—Scottie Scheffler will miss having that two-shot lead if he loses by one: LOCK

TWEET OF THE WEEK

Michael Kim always delivers—even when things don’t go his way.

But despite not making it to the Tour Championship—playing partner Viktor Hovland knocked him out with a birdie on the final hole—it was still a great season for the heir to the title of Golf Twitter King now that Max Homa has abdicated the throne.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Now that's great branding.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK (CRAZY HOLE-OUT DIVISION)

If this is real—sadly, it’s getting harder and harder to tell these days—it’s possibly the craziest and luckiest shot in golf history.

Wow. Calling that a one-in-a-million shot isn’t even doing it justice.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK (CRAZY PRO HOLE-OUTS DIVISION)

And what are the odds of a tour pro—even a top one like Nicolai Hojgaard—holing out full shots from more than 100 yards twice in a two-hole span?!

Insane stuff. Even the legendary Moe Norman would have been impressed by that.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK (FAIL DIVISION)

This is beyond brutal to watch:

And how about the lady videoing telling the guy, “Don’t choke”? And then laughing in his face? Rough.

THIS WEEK IN PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION

Two GOATs in their respective sports showed Scheffler love after his amazing pitch-in. Longtime avid golfer Pat Mahomes:

And new avid golfer LeBron James:

Hey, game recognize game.

THIS WEEK IN CELEBRITY GOLFERS

Speaking of LeBron, the guy is the new Sauce Gardner. He is absolutely hooked on golf. And his swing looks better and better with each video that gets posted:

I’m really happy he’s found golf for when he finally retires.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“There’s nothing worse than trying your hardest and playing like ass … I did it for a few weeks now, and it sucked.” —Xander Schauffele. Great quote, Xander, but try doing it for a few decades and get back to me.

THIS AND THAT

Congrats to Akie Iwai on winning her first LPGA title at the Standard Portland Classic, making her and twin sister Chisato the first twins to win on the LPGA Tour. Mom and dad must be very, VERY proud. … Congrats to Russell Henley, Harris English and Bryson DeChambeau on taking the final three automatic qualifying spots for the U.S. Ryder Cup squad. Not that any of that makes captain Keegan Bradley’s job any easier. … The new PGA Tour schedule is out for 2026. And, it still has way too many events. … And, finally, I had the pleasure of playing in Jalen Brunson’s Second Round Foundation at Westchester Country Club. Here’s my childhood bud and fellow lifelong Knicks fan Alex Christon and I taking a selfie with new Knicks coach Mike Brown:

Seems like a great guy so we didn’t tell him that he’s already on the hot seat.

RANDOM QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Will I ever break par again for real?

Should I start taking creatine?

Does Scottie need a fill-in caddie during the offseason?